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Stella Bellarosa
Category:
Young Adult/Teen
Publisher: purple pie press
ISBN-10: 0615903037
Type: Fiction
Pages: 288
Copyright: June 15, 2012
ISBN-13: 9780615903033
Price: $0.99 (eBook)
What happens when two best friends get caught stealing a substitute teacher's wallet? Find out by reading this silly, sad, fun, serious book about two thirteen-year-olds who runaway to midtown Manhattan after getting suspended.
A wallet, a thief, and a brilliant plan--what can possibly go wrong?
At least that’s what Stella thinks when she urges Pin Pin to return the stolen wallet—until she gets caught with the goods, that is, and all heaven, hell and whatever’s-in-between breaks loose, forcing the BFFs to hit the road.
Tag along with Stella and Pin Pin as they ditch Little Italy for midtown Manhattan, all the while battling archrival Angie Como for the title to SOHO’s Annual Food Drive, their ticket to Regis Academy—a posh high school for girls, hidden far, far away in the Catskills. Oh-la-la, for the chance to leave home—for good!
Problem is... the road isn’t much safer than home, especially when the runaways attract the attention of police, museum officials and—worst of all—Stella’s unforgiving father. Also pitted against their extravagant dreams is the threat of Pin and her family’s deportation, including baby sister, Audrey, who lies at the heart of this quirky coming-of-age novel—STELLA BELLAROSA, a serious MG with a funny-bone.
Excerpt
“So … how was your day? Anything new?” I was surprised at Pin’s perkiness, considering how glum she’d been this morning.
“Nope. Nothing’s new. No thing what-so-ever.” Ha. That’s when I knew she was lying. Pin Pin’s always emphatic when she lies.
“Oh,” I replied coolly. The best way to get info from Pin’s to act disinterested. It drives her nuts. “Well, ‘nothing’s’ better than ‘something bad’ I guess.”
Pin looked at me sharply. “What do you mean? Did you hear something?”
Hmmm. Now she was being cagy, so I baited her.
“Nah. Well, yeah, nah. Not really. You know—no big deal.”
When she didn’t bite, I tried a more direct approach.
“Oh, well. Okay. You know what my day was like—regurgitated eggs, chunks of….”
“Okay, okay. I… confess…. Because you are making me sick, Stella Bellarosa. Sick in my gizzards.”
Heheh. Pin’s word choice killed me. But the second way to make her talk was to gross her out. Which I’d done, at least in part. So I prodded some more.
“Confess, Pin? Confess to what?”
“Oh. Didn’t I tell you?”
She tried to act blasé, but her right eye kept blinking. Pin had a tic or something that twitched when she was upset—really upset. Like when she talked about China. Or home. Or Audr—. Suddenly I knew this had something to do with her family.
“Tell me what?” I said.
“Oh, yeah… you were probably puking when it happen.”
“When what happened?” I said in a clipped voice. Pin’s coyness was starting to irritate me.
“It,” she said, shrugging. “I take it.”
“Take what?”
“Mrs. Tucci’s wallet.”
I needed a calming breath, but choked when I gulped in a mouthful of rancid air instead. Shock does that to a person. And, believe me, shock is mild for describing how I felt.
“What do you mean you took Mrs. Tucci’s wallet?”
“It was easy,” she continued, shifting her weight in a decidedly uneasy way.
Easy? Yeah, I could believe it. We’d known Mrs. Tucci forever. She was the oldest substitute at Holy Infant Elementary—maybe in the world. She wore pointy glasses with rhinestones in the corners and carried a purse as big as a dumpster. Must’ve eaten truckloads of spumoni as a kid, because she had three gold teeth.
“So?” A lump of mucous had formed in my throat, but I ignored it. “How? And, oh my god… why?”
“Well. Mrs. T’s a rich woman, right?” Pin explained. “You’ve seen her pocky-book. It’s huge. She has gold in her mouth and diamonds everywhere. She’s probably a millionaire. No big deal.”
“No big deal?” I could feel another lump rising in my gullet. “Pin Pin, you have to confess—at least to Mrs. Tucci. Sr. Pio will flatten you if she finds out. And she will find out; you know that. That nun’s got a nose for screw-ups.”
Geez. I didn’t mean to say Pin was a screw-up, but sometimes she amazed me. I mean, she looks like this cute kid with perfect teeth and straight A’s; then you find out she’s got a rap sheet as long as the Brooklyn Bridge. At school, anyway. I don’t know what sort of crap she gets into at home—and I didn’t want to know.
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